“Success” on this project might be defined as receipt of a passing grade, accomplishment of goals outlined in the rubric, or achievement of the end result of actual, measurable change. Many students found academic success on this project (86% of students scored a C or better). Using either definition, in order to achieve success, students had to invest. A handful of the students who expressed reluctance in the beginning of the Twitter project never really invested or
took ownership of the project, so naturally, they fell short of the requirements that would lead them to a passing grade. Coincidentally, the students who were most forthcoming in their reflection essays about the lack of impact or influence they felt they had were the students who engaged on the project the least. They were the ones who sent the fewest number of tweets, had the least amount of followers, and never really caught on to the concept of tweeting. Having used Twitter for civic and political purposes, and having taught this assignment for three consecutive semesters, I can tell you without a doubt that Twitter is a platform that requires users to get their hands dirty in order to really get good at it. In many ways, it’s counter-intuitive and has many idiosyncrasies that can discourage new users. Some of this quirkiness is related to establishment of digital identity, but some of it is sheer understanding of features and functionality. For
example, students who did not apply the lessons in lurking, mining, and hashtagging really struggled to identify quality follows and earn followers themselves.
Students who didn’t commit themselves to the kind of participation I recommended or weren’t willing to engage in some initial trial and error or weren’t comfortable adapting their approaches and methods did not end up being successful on this project. I suppose the question is whether their lack of buy-in is directly linked to their lack of success or if other factors (laziness, general lack of motivation, for example) inhibited their success. Not enjoying an assignment isn’t the sole reason for not succeeding on the assignment, as teachers of writing studies see regularly when we assign a literary analysis or research paper. Factoring in the percentage of students who will simply not apply themselves to any type of assignment and comparing that to the four who were disengaged on the Twitter project in my class leads me to believe these students might not have applied themselves on a traditional, paper-based writing assignment either. These students could be those with the “damaged interest” in learning that Winslow and
Mische talk about with the basic writer’s experience. It is also worth considering that the students who didn’t apply themselves and didn’t find success with this project might also have used the type of assignment as a justification for their lack of success rather than taking
ownership of their lack of investment in the work.
One student, in particular, struggled with making the platform serve the interest he had. Julian wanted to spend the semester promoting the philosophy of Nihilism. We talked at length about the kind of challenges he might face on Twitter with such a topic, but ultimately, I allowed him to forge ahead, since he felt very strongly about his topic selection. About a week and a half into the three-week project, Julian had to change his topic to one that would better suit the Twitter platform because his work was gaining no traction at all. He had told me that his grade was important to him, so we decided together that it would be best to adopt a more Twitter- friendly topic for the final ten days. Julian describes the experience in his reflection essay (full essay can be found in the appendix):
I wasn’t conscious of the limitations of the platform and this ignorance led me to make numerous mistakes in picking topics, interacting with others, and curating my profile. It took two weeks and two other Twitter profiles for me to comfortably settle into a topic, and by then it was too late to catch up to the class average. Although detrimental, my failures taught me important facts about Twitter and social media landscape in
general […] Most important to my learning about social media was my second attempt on a philosophical ideology, nihilism, instead of a “social issue.” I took it to mean that I could pursue the tenants of my ideology as a person using Twitter. I thought long and hard about how to focus down nihilism and skepticism into something easily vocalized and communicated through Twitter and came to a conclusion. Nihilism, my topic, is the
ultimate form of skepticism, the rejection of moral objectivity and inherent meaning in favor of self-discovery and learning. I asked my classmates specified questions about their selected topic on issues I felt weren’t clarified enough or demanded further explanation. What I had done could’ve been seen as simply contrarian for the sake of a quick response, but I meant for it to lead into a greater discussion. I was mistaken in the second part of my plan, as I had thought that Twitter was a place to foster and encourage debate and questions. I discovered that Twitter is not a place for conversation. Twitter is not a place where most people can eloquently express their opinions and views and expect to have a fulfilling discussion.
Although Twitter actually is a “place for conversation” and debate, Julian found Twitter to be an “intellectually limiting soapbox” and ultimately dismissed it as a suitable one for proper discourse because “the small character limit encourages short, reactionary comments and replies, and discourages meaningful conversations about any real issue.” His position is shared, in fact, by a whole host of social media skeptics (see Chapter 2 where I discuss slacktivism).
Julian ultimately did find moderate success in his project because he figured out how to adapt: “This failure to flourish in the community gave me great insight into the function of the platform itself along with the expectations and desires of those using it and even though the project itself may be considered a failure, I feel that my revelations about social media and specifically Twitter account as a success of sorts.” In his storification of his new media work (we called this the e-portfolio), this is how Julian described his initial foray into Twitter work:
Figure 21: Julian's Notes from Storify, Part I
As a result of his experiences, we both learned a valuable lesson about Twitter activism and, well, activism in general. There are some ideas that can’t reasonably be put into action, and there is some change we might seek that simply can’t be acted on. Promoting a philosophy can only be accomplished through discussion and illustration of ideas, and these types of
conversations require forums that are conducive to longer, more in-depth exchanges. For these reasons, I knew Julian would find much greater success on his efforts to educate people on the philosophy of Nihilism in a blog.